Weather (a)live

The weather.

Global weather

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The video (click for play/pause) shows the global weather at the above indicated date, which should be today, at 1AM UTC.

The arrows show the horizontal wind speed and direction, with light blue very strong winds and dark blue very light winds. The winds are included up to 200hPa, which is about 11-12km in the atmosphere. The white surfaces are thick clouds - thin clouds are not shown as it would cover most of the globe.

Regional weather

Click on any of the regions below, to see a snapshot of the weather at the chosen region. Use the time slider below the image to see the weather right now, in the past, or the future. In addition, I have a YouTube weather playlist (click here) where you can see animations of the weather visualisations created here.
There is also a 3D interactive part on the right, which uses WebGL. It takes a fair amount of time to load, so please be patient.
There is also a 3D interactive part, but unfortunately this isn't supported by your browser. It uses WebGL, and e.g. Vivaldi would be a nice browser to try if you like.
There is also a 3D interactive part, that unfortunately doesn't work on mobile devices. Come back from a desktop computer for a fully interactive experience!

Weather Reviews

My YouTube channel features a dedicated weather playlist, which shows animations from the images on this webiste. You can see it below - click on the little playlist icon in the top left corner to select a specific video from the playlist. Or subscribe on YouTube to be among the first to be informed about the newest additions.

Notable events

This section shows some notable weather events in recent history. The choice is completely subjective, and mainly reflects the places I have lived. Some detail about each event will be displayed once you click on it. If you feel like there is this particular event that you would like to see on this page, let me know through the contact form.

Australia's worst bushfire catastrophe in history, the day of 7 February 2009 is commonly referred to as Black Saturday. With temperatures well above 40°C due to a strong heat wave, the state of Victoria in South East Australia was bone dry when a strong cold front swept over the land, creating perfect conditions for widespread fires.

Officially a hurricane, Sandy became known as Superstorm Sandy. The reason for this is that it not only was a strong hurricane hitting the US North East coast with its large metropolitan population (Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, etc.), but also the fact that it merged with another bad weather phenomenon, a Nor'Easter. Thus, Sandy brought the mighty power of a tropical cyclone together with the devastating force of a midlatitude snow storm, and resulted in enormous damage. It was impressive. I know, I was just a few miles from the eye when it made landfall on October 29 2012 at 8pm. It was a sad Halloween.

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in the history of the US. It made landfall in Louisiana on August 29 2005, and flooded all of New Orleans. The city still hasn't recovered from the blow.

Haiyan was a Supertyphoon, which made landfall in the Philippines on November 7 2013. It is the strongest storm recorded at landfall, and produced some of the strongest winds ever measured at the surface (over 300km/s). The Philippines are still struggling with the aftermath of the catastrophe.

Winter storm Lothar hit central Europe on 26 December 1999. It was very badly predicted, and people weren't warned of the hurricane-strength winds that would cut down trees and power lines all over the continent. I myself was wandering through the woods that day because the trains weren't running, completely oblivious of the potential danger in the air - there was a second storm front coming right behind it, this one called Martin.

Welcome Simon. It was a cold day. It was a beautiful day.

The East Coast Low passing through around 8-9 June 2007 was one of five during that month. It brought major flooding in the Hunter Valley and the Central Coast. It is probably the most famous of East Coast Lows, as the cargo ship Pasha Bulker ran aground on Nobbys Beach in Newcastle, NSW. The stranded ship was a major tourist attraction and pictures of the large cargo laying on Nobbys Beach went around the world.

Acknowledgements

Software

All visualizations shown here are produced with ParaView and my own software package pv_atmos. Image optimisation made possible by pngnq. Idea, programming, and realisation by myself, including this website.

This page is for visualisation purposes only. It is not the intention of this page to provide any kind of weather services. The intention of this website is to show clouds and winds in an appealing way. Nothing more.